COLE'S NEWSWIRE, July 21, 1999

July 21, 1999
Vol. 5, No. 30

COLE'S NEWSWIRE is a weekly distribution of information about the sales and installations of publishing technology and the latest news on new products developed by suppliers to the industry.

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BERGES ET COMPANY (BETCO)
BETCO, a provider of pre-press consulting services and related software and equipment based in Jensen Beach, Fla., has announced that it recently upgraded the 90-seat Quark Publishing System in use by EL COMERCIO, a 100,000-circulation daily in Quito, Ecuador.

BETCO is on the Web at http://www.bergesetco.com/.

ENFOCUS SOFTWARE
Enfocus, a supplier of pre-press production tools based in San Mateo, Calif., is now shipping PitStop 4.0 for Adobe Acrobat 4.0. PitStop provides preflighting and native editing modes for working on files in the Portable Document Format (PDF), including graphic search and replace and paragraph-based editing with text reflow.

PitStop is available for $295; an upgrade for current users of PitStop and CheckUp software costs $99. Enfocus is on the Web at http://www.enfocus.com/.

EXTENSIS CORP.
Extensis, a supplier of image processing software based in Portland, Ore., has announced PhotoFrame 2.0, an upgrade to its image frames package for Adobe Photoshop. PhotoFrame provides more than 1000 frame styles that can be used as-is or customized by the end user.

Buyers can get new frames and borders through a partnership with Dynamic Graphics and the eFrames web site, which users can access while working in PhotoFrame. Design features include such special effects as drop shadows, textures and opacity.

PhotoFrame 2.0 in English will be available July 27 for $199.95. Extensis is on the Web at http://www.extensis.com/.

HEIDELBERG COLOR PUBLISHING SOLUTIONS AMERICAS
Heidelberg CPS, a German supplier of imaging devices and solutions with U.S. offices in Melville, N.Y., has more than halved the price of its LinoColor DCam digital image capture and color correction software. The price was cut from $2295 to $995.

Heidelberg's ScanOpen DCam profiling software, which supports profile standards set by the International Color Consortium, also is being offered at a reduced price, $895. Earlier this month, Heidelberg cut prices on scanner models, including the CIRCON (down 24 percent, to $9980), OPAL Ultra (down 40 percent, to $2395) and SAPHIR Ultra 2 (down 53 percent, to $1395).

Heidelberg CPS is on the Web at http://www.getrealcolor.com/.

METACOMMUNICATIONS INC.
MetaCommunications, a supplier of digital assets management solutions based in Iowa City, Iowa, has announced a competitive software upgrade offer to purchasers of four competing products: Inso MediaBank, Imation Media Manager, North Plains Systems Telescope and Canto Cumulus Network.

A buyer of any one of those products who made the purchase before June 30 may request a three-user version of MetaCommunications' Virtual Ticket, a $4900 value, for free. The offer, which is open until Sept. 30, also includes 30 days of technical support.

For more information, visit MetaCommunications on the Web at http://www.meta-comm.com/.

NEWSINC.
Will the closing of the INDIANAPOLIS NEWS on Oct. 1 herald the start of a new line of newspaper funerals? Yes, writes NEWSINC. Editor-Publisher David M. Cole, suggesting that a dozen or so newspapers are still alive thanks to a booming economy and low, low newsprint prices.

Inside, Senior Editor Pete Wetmore talks with NEWS Publisher Dale Duncan about the plan to close Indy's weak evening daily, and gets the lowdown on those low newsprint prices. Also inside, Correspondent L. Carol Christopher totals the hidden costs of participating in journalism contests, while Wetmore rounds up four second quarter earnings reports and scans the new employment horizon for effective ways to retain employees.

For more about the July 19 issue of NEWSINC., visit The Cole Group on the Web at http://colegroup.com/.

OPEN MARKET INC.
The Burlington, Mass.-based provider of Internet commerce software has announced that it will acquire FutureTense Inc., the Acton, Mass. software firm that develops and markets on-line content management software.

The agreement calls for Open Market to issue approximately 7.2 million shares of common stock to the owners of FutureTense; this values the deal at approximately $125 million. The acquisition is subject to shareholder approval and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year.

Open Market has sold more than 25,000 merchant licenses and counts the WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE EDITION, Lycos, Acer, Sony and Ingram Micro among its customers. FutureTense customers include THE AGE in Melbourne, Australia, the ARIZONA REPUBLIC, THE SUN of Baltimore, Community Newspaper Co. of Needham, Mass., the GREENVILLE (S.C.) NEWS, the INDIANAPOLIS STAR NEWS, the NEW YORK TIMES, the STAR TRIBUNE of Minneapolis and the WASHINGTON POST.

Open Market is on the web at http://www.openmarket.com/; FutureTense is on the web at http://www.futuretense.com/.

REAL MEDIA
New York-based Real Media, an on-line advertising go-between, has introduced Retail Direct, a low-cost way to advertise on the Web. Retail Direct places ads on an untargeted basis through a rotation of more than 300 web sites, including 65 run by newspapers.

The service now records 60 million impressions a month, a figure that is expected to rise to 100 million this fall. Real Media is on the Web at http://www.realmedia.com/.

TEAM ASA
Team ASA, a San Diego-based supplier of networking products for the pre-press environment, has announced that its Stallion-GE-II family of gigabit ethernet adapters now supports the Mac OS X operating system. Improvements in the company's original OS X driver are expected to increase the baseline transfer rate of 14 megabytes per second.

Team ASA is on the Web at http://www.teamasa.com/.

THESPECDEPT.COM
TheSpecDept.com, an on-line source for advertising services operated by AdOne of Van Nuys, Calif., has announced that two companies now are contributing their expertise to the service. The firms as McDonald Classified Services, which provides newspaper artwork, photo files and spec ads, and AdMall.com, which provides co-op and sales content to newspapers.

TheSpecDept.com is on the Web at http://www.thespecdept.com/.

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COLE'S NEWSWIRE is compiled by Pete Wetmore and distributed by The Cole Group, publishers of THE COLE PAPERS and NEWSINC., and consultants to newspapers and magazines worldwide. To receive more information about The Cole Group, send e-mail to: info@colegroup.com.

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